The Light Was Born From Darkness
by Wisteria Urs
Summary: After the fall of the Dark Lord, anyone with connections to Voldemort and the Death Eaters is rounded up and thrown in jail. Astoria Greengrass and Draco Malfoy find themselves occupying close cells in an abandoned jail. With nothing to live for, the pair finds themselves drawn to each other, proving that even hope can flower in the darkest of places.
1. Chapter 1: The Chase

His shoes had always been binding, annoyingly so, but it was now that he wished he had appreciated them more. His parents had always purchased him shoes made from the finest materials—Italian leather was nothing compared to the dragon skin loafers he had grown up in.

He ducked under a protruding tree branch and continued to run. His chest was heaving, perspiration cropping up on his brow and running down his spine. His hair was heavy and hot against the back of his bare neck. He nearly tripped over a knotted root that grew from the cold, hard, ground, and he had to jump high in the air to avoid it. A flash of light flew over his shoulder and exploded over his head. It collided with a tree branch, sending a curtain of pine needles falling to the ground, and a nest of birds squawked annoyingly as they took flight.

"Stop in the name of the Ministry!" One of them, the one who could run the fastest, commanded him. He didn't look back, he continued to run, zigzagging through the woods, his heart beating so quickly he thought it might burst from his chest. He couldn't see his parents anymore; he couldn't even hear his father yelling indignantly. He assumed this meant they had already been captured. They might have already been transferred to Azkaban. The thought of it made him run faster. He couldn't feel his feet, much less his calves anymore, though that might have just been from the cold.

It was only September, but it had snowed the night before. The flakes had come down angrily, pounding against the tarp over his head, the wind screaming into the dark night. When he had woken this morning, the ground was covered in a thin, icy blanket of the stuff, and he had cursed with displeasure. He had to boil a kettle over a handful of bluebell flames, and had to put on the only pair of socks he had left, the ones with the holes in the ankles.

The socks were gone now, probably blown to bits when they had arrived. They had apparated into the small corner of the woods he had claimed for his own. He didn't know how they found him, but that didn't seem to matter when he stepped from the tent. They set it on fire immediately after, burning away the belongings he had left.

Except the diary. He always kept that with him. The shoddy little book that had once been a rich and unused gift from his parents, given to him his seventeenth birthday.

"You're an adult now," his mother said proudly as he unwrapped it, oblivious to the crinkle in his brow. "We thought you might want to record some of your experiences, write them down. Perhaps it will be therapeutic."

Therapeutic. He almost laughed at the thought, but then another spell flew at him, and he whirled to the right. It scraped his skin, and he shouted out with pain. The spell had ripped at his shirt and his skin, leaving a deep, oozing cut. It would leave a scar, no doubt. He flicked a spell over his shoulder and heard a shout—he had managed to hit one of them with a stinging spell that would cripple them for a minute, perhaps thirty seconds more, but it provided no more than a two-minute distraction.

And that's when it happened. He reached a stream. It had iced over from the storm the night before. It appeared thick enough to walk on, but he wasn't sure. He glanced back behind him. A pack of the thick-robed men were converging on him, wands held aloft, all shouting. He couldn't risk being cursed or being caught. He turned back to the stream and winced as he slid a foot forward, carefully scooting across the surface with as much care as he could, though he moved quickly.

His friends at school had always teased him about his frame. He was tall and thin, barely a hint of muscle, they always chanted. He had grown even more thin in the past four months, but the muscle was there now, just apparent under his pale, vein-crossed skin. He silently thanked his parents now for his slim frame; the ice seemed to hold his weight just fine. But then, just as luck would have it, a clever one of the men shot a spell at the ice, just under his feet. There was an erroneous crack, and he fell through, plunging into the water below.

Immediately, his skin felt as if it had been subjected to an icy fire, his pores were screaming, and he panicked, waving his arms and legs as he tried to surface. His wand slipped from his grip and was swept away into the darkness. A hand came through the darkness, reaching for him, and he pulled away, closing his eyes. It would be better to die at this point; he would not allow them to take him this way…

The hand overpowered him. It grabbed him by the hair that now reached down to his shoulders. It pulled, yanked, and drug him from the water and out into the icy air. He felt his eyes roll into the back of his head as he took his first breath, swallowing deeply, and then everything went black.

"What have you got for me today, Cole?" Astoria Greengrass leaned her forehead against the mold-encrusted jail cell bars and tried to smile. The prison guard, a young man in his early twenties, looked around nervously as she spoke to him. He was hunched over, his pathetic appearance punctuated by a ginger mullet and copious acne. He walked the hallway pushing a trolley, though she was the only prisoner up here. On the top of the cart was a plate with an indistinguishable mass of brown goo. "I'm a growing girl, tell me there's something I can actually eat today."

"I'm sorry Astoria." He reached for the plate, and then froze under her steely look. "Miss Greengrass, I'm sorry." He leaned down and shoved the plate through the small gap in the bars, protected by a force field that worked only from the outside. Astoria knew this from first-hand experience; she had tried to squeeze through the insanely small space her first night in the cell. That night had been the only night in her life she had broken down and cried.

"Stop apologizing," Astoria commanded, looking down at the goo. "What the hell is this?" She prodded it with her pinkie nail, which had grown too long for her liking. "Is that…are there pieces of _meat _in this shit?"

"Liver. Try to eat it, if you can, I don't know if you will be getting dinner tonight."

"I am a human with rights," Astoria shouted, her stomach leaping into her throat. She grasped the bars and tried to smile seductively, charmingly, but Cole seemed too nervous to respond to such a gesture. "Oh, please pull some strings. I promise I won't try to scratch the other guards again, but you know how they are…sometimes their eyes wander. I am just a girl, after all." She looked down for effect, made the corners of her lips turn down, as if she were about to cry.

"It's not that," Cole said, his voice wavering as he grasped the cart. "There's a new prisoner coming in today—the one they've been waiting for."

"Who it is?" Astoria immediately questioned, rising to her feet. Her heart suddenly felt light. "Is it someone from the school? It is someone from Hogwarts? Someone I know."

"I can't say, Miss Greengrass."

Astoria knew that if he were closer, she could reach out and run her fingernails down the length of his face, applying just enough force to break through the skin and leave long, bloody tracks. But she sighed and pushed herself away from the bars, retreating into the corner of her cell. Outside, the wind howled against the cinderblocks, and Astoria reached for the threadbare blanket on her cot and wrapped it tightly around herself. The metal door at the end of the hallway shut with a final, ringing tone. She would be by herself for sometime now, alone only with her thoughts and the leaky sink that drove her mad when she tried to sleep at night.

She went to the sink and looked into the mirror that hung above it. She wondered if there might be a way to break it somehow, use the pieces to stab a guard, break free. Or, maybe she could slit her wrists. Astoria cocked her head to one side and ran her fingers down the side of the mirror. No, it was reinforced, set right into the wall.

Her face had grown gaunt over the past three months. When she had gone to school, when her parents had still been alive, she had always been groomed and polished. Her hair had been long and espresso colored but infused with caramel highlights that complimented her hazel eyes. Her skin had always had a slight sun-kissed tone to it, even in the dead of winter. But now, the color had faded from the lack of vitamin D, she was pale as a ghost. They had cut her hair when she was caught and admitted—it was just up to her shoulders now, and the highlights had long washed out. Astoria gripped the sides of the sink and breathed deeply.

The metal doors at the other end of the hallway, the entrance, banged open.

"Let me go, I didn't do anything!" They had brought in the other prisoner. Astoria rushed to the front of her cell and wrapped her hands around the bars, trying to peer down the length of the hallway. The voice sounded completely panicked, but weak as well. "Get your filthy hands off me!"

The prison guards didn't reply. Astoria supposed that having humans guard you and care for you (if you could call it that), was better than having those creepy dementors lurking around, but she still hated the guards. They were trained to treat her as if she were inferior, but dangerous all the same. They looked at her as if she were dog shit on the bottom of her shoe, but when they were close to her, close enough to see the hate in her eyes, they backed away and left her alone.

The guards were dragging a boy down the hallway. He didn't appear to be much older than Astoria, perhaps by two or three years. He was shaking violently, either from cold or fear, it wasn't apparent. The guards reached the cell across from Astoria's and opened it with a flick of their wands, because it was just _that _easy to imprison someone. They threw the boy inside, without care, and sealed the bars behind him. The boy collided with the metal end of his cot and screamed, clutching his upper arm. Astoria noticed that the material of his shirt on his upper arm was stained with red, as if he were bleeding through it.

"Let me out!" The pale boy cried, rushing to the bars. Astoria could see tears in his eyes, glinting at her from all the way across the hall. "I haven't done anything!" His vocal cords strained, threatened to give out. The guards kept walking. The exit door shut behind them. The boy screamed again, more loudly this time, but now his voice was not frightened, it was tainted with anger.

Astoria turned away from the boy, her own fear and frustration unfurling within her chest. It ran through her body like a dragon's fire.

"Don't bother screaming," she said aloud, sitting on her cot and crossing her legs. She leaned the back of her head against the grimy wall. "They can't hear you anymore."


	2. Chapter 2: The Girl Across the Hall

He only woke when he could feel a stinging pain in his wrist. His eyes didn't adjust to the harsh light at first, it was blurry and disorienting compared to the mellow sunlight he had grown adjusted to. When he finally could see, he was surprised to see that he was in an enclosed room, with a lamp sitting directly above his head, burning into his eyes.

He tried to sit up, and immediately, a pair of hands shoved him down. He was sprawled out in a reclining chair made of leather cushions that had long lost their shine. His arms were on the arms, and he realized that the stinging pain in his wrist was because there were gold restraints chained tightly around his wrists and elbows. He glanced around and saw a pair of women in white robes, masks, and hairnets moving cautiously around him. They were attending to his feet, he noticed, which were puffy and red and crisscrossed with small cuts. He tried to flex his toes, flex his ankles, but they refused to move. It was as if the bones were frozen in place.

"Stay still," one of the Nurses warned him in a harsh voice. "It's a wonder we don't have remove whole limbs." He glanced towards out of the corner of his eye and saw a man standing in front of a door at the end of the room. The man was vaguely familiar, tall and mocha skinned, with an earring in one ear. His arms were crossed menacingly, his wand just visible as it perked out from one purple-robed sleeve.

"Where am I?" He asked. The nurses didn't answer. "What's going on?"

One of the nurses moved forwards and thrust a vial in his face. Silver vapors rose from the surface, unfurling around his nostrils. He could feel the tendrils of the vapor sink into his skin, travel up into his brain. Immense warmth spread through his body, and suddenly, he could move his toes again. He frowned.

"Where am I?" He glanced side to side, but the nurses moved away, seemingly evaporating into the white walls that enclosed him. The man at the door answered him this time.

"You are in Whitby."

The name stirred something in his memory. A school teaching, so long ago. It had been in History of Magic, that he knew. It had something to do with the imprisonment of mad witches and wizards, but he couldn't remember the details of the lesson. He had spent it sleeping in the back row or quietly pretending to curse Harry Potter, much to the amusement of his friends.

"East Yorkshire?" When he spoke, he realized how his voice crackled. It had been so long since he had something to drink—hours on end. "What in the bloody hell-"

"We've been searching for you and your parents for some time now." The man stepped forward and slipped his wand away from sight. He clasped his hands in a sympathetic-seeming manner, but it was hard to tell if this was genuine. "You managed to evade us for sometime, Draco."

"Where are my parents?"

The man ignored him and began to pace around the chair. Draco struggled against the restraints in the chair, but they simply grew a lilac color and he felt zaps of electricity rush through his skin, painful little blips entering his bloodstream and shaking his body uncontrollably. He fell back against the recliner and grit his teeth.

"What do you want?"

"It doesn't look good for you," the man continued to pace. "Running away from the Ministry, from the Minister, it makes you look as if you have something to hide."

"I have nothing to hide," Draco spat immediately. "I demand you release me at once. I haven't done a thing. You can't prove anything."

The man paused right by Draco's feet and sighed. "Sadly, we have half a dozen witnesses who say otherwise. And they can prove it. I presume you've heard of veritruserum?"

"I'm not an idiot," Draco retorted. His pulse quickened, and he could feel himself begin to sweat. However, when he shook his head to clear the sweat from his brow, he found that his hair did not shake out like it used to. They had cut his hair short, much like it used to be, but even a little shorter. It was a shame; he had grown somewhat attached to his long hair.

"We are conducting trials of these witnesses I've mentioned. And when juries hear of what you've done, you will be put on trial too, Mr. Malfoy."

"And what is it I'm supposed to have done?"

The man glanced down at him for a long moment. He thought he saw a shimmer of pity cross the man's face, perhaps it was doubt, but the man turned away without a word. He crossed the room in powerful strides and yanked open the door.

"What did I do?" Draco howled at the man's retreating back, bile rising into his throat. He struggled against the restraints, despite their painful grasp. He glanced around the room, helplessly, realizing that there was nothing there—no people, no furniture, just the lamp and the chair and the restraints. There weren't even windows. "Where am I?"

A pair of men entered the room, each uniformed in dark black robes that were cut short, sweeping against the top of their feet rather than brushing against the concrete floor. The men were identical themselves—heavy set and scowling, with salt-and-pepper streaked bowl haircuts. If he hadn't been so confused and frightened, Draco would have pictured them comically: as a pair of bumbling but angry friars. The men approached Draco and began to tap at the restraints, pressing the pads of their fingers against the smarting metal. The metal seemed to absorb their fingerprints, and the restraints broke open.

Draco wanted to move his arms. He wanted to punch them, fight them, and even just hold them off. But instead, his arms were too limp to even raise half an inch above the cushioned arms. The men seized his arms and began to pull. Draco found his whole body was limp and exhausted. He could hardly keep his head forward, he wanted to just rest, sleep, but he forced himself to keep his eyes open, watch every move and everything that passed through his eyesight. He would memorize his surroundings now, in order to break free of them later. It wasn't the first time he had done this.

But there wasn't much to be seen. The guards lead him down the hall, keeping a tight grip on his arms. The walls were bare, devoid of windows except for a few small ones that were set up high and reinforced with metal bars that seemed to thick to dismember. The only doors were metallic, industrial ones at the end of either hallway, with signs that read: _Authorized Personnel Only. _The guards lead him through one of these doors and up a narrow staircase, into what seemed like another bare hallway.

But this one, Draco realized, wasn't like the first hallway. There were cells lining the walls—jail cells. However, they were all empty, devoid of prisoners, and the thought made him anxious and somewhat terrified. He struggled and let out a shout, but the guards were too strong and at this point, Draco was simply too weak. They carried him right to the center of the hallway, opened up a cell on the right hand side, and pushed him in. He collapsed, his exhaustion beating him, and collided his upper arm with the metal frame of the cot that was pushed against the wall. His arm burst with pain, he could feel blood pulsing from the cut, and angry, exasperated tears rose in his eyes.

"Let me out!" Draco cried, leaning against the bars. He could see, in his peripheral vision, the guards walking away, ignoring him without so much as a flinch. Draco grasped his arm tightly and lowered his head. He hated himself for feeling as if he might cry, but indeed, he thought me might.

"Don't bother screaming. They can't hear you anymore." Draco's head shot up, confused and alarmed, and he caught sight of a girl across the hallway, sitting in her own jail cell. She was curled up on her cot, her legs crisscrossed almost peacefully. Her head leaned back against the wall with ease, and she kept her eyes closed.

"Who are you?" Draco asked. She seemed vaguely familiar, as if he had seen her once or twice before but had never quite gone as so far to really get to know her. He blinked at her. Judging by her appearance and her size, she was maybe his age, but a little younger. She picked feebly at her own nails, and Draco saw her cuticles were torn apart and bloody.

"I thought you might recognize a fellow Slytherin," she said tonelessly, and then rolled her head to the side, so she could look him in the eye. "Loosing your touch, Malfoy."

"How do you know me?" Draco asked. He was quite sure he had never spoken to this girl before.

"Like I said, Slytherin. You were a prefect, after all." The girl rose from her cot, the camel-colored blankets wrapped tightly around her shoulders, as if she were a swaddled infant. "Astoria Greengrass. We've met."

Draco Malfoy had night terrors. She was unsure if he knew it, but it kept her awake. All through the night, she could hear him shaking in his cell, moaning, yelling. Once, she rose up and squinted though the dark and saw him flailing around in his cell, his arms and legs forming a mad windmill as he fought invisible foes. He tangled himself in his blankets and fell off the cot in the process.

She was used to sleep deprivation. She told herself this the next morning as she used the leaky sink to flush out her mouth. She splashed water on her face too; there was nothing more effective than make once man up and face reality than a splash of freezing cold water. The dark circles beneath her cat-like eyes were permanent now, she noted with displeasure. They looked especially horrendous with her pale skin.

"Are they going to feed us, or do they just let us starve?" Astoria turned to glance across the hall. Draco was sitting on the edge of his own cot, his knees propped on his elbows as he stared down at the filthy, concrete floor in despair.

"If they didn't feed us, I'd be dead." Astoria watched plaintively as Draco rose from his bed, went to his own sink, and ran a hand down the length of his face when he caught sight of himself in his own mirror. If he paid her any notice, he didn't show it. Draco stripped off his own shirt, and then winced visibly as he glanced down at his arm. The wound had begun to well and pucker, the surrounding skin an angry, fiery color. The wound itself had begun to ooze as well. "That looks bad."

"You think?"

"What happened?" She asked. She went to the bars of her cell, instinctively, to get a better look. Draco, almost unconsciously, moved towards the front of his bars too and shoved his wounded arm up between the slats, so she could see it better. He dabbed apprehensively at the cut with his own shirt and then took in a deep intake of breath.

"Got hit by a curse yesterday. Well, it brushed me." He stopped dabbing at the wound and then fixed her with a questioning, but trusting gaze. "They could give me medicine for this, right?"

"They'll do anything to keep you alive and in one piece," Astoria said. "But don't count on them trying to make you comfortable."

"How long have you been here?"

Astoria paused. She gripped the bars for support. She couldn't see Draco anymore. Green flashes of light. Screams. Feet all around her, running and running away. Her sister screaming, just trying to get out, just trying to escape—

"Hey, hey, are you okay?" Draco's sounded through her head, and it snapped Astoria out of her reverie. He was watching her with concerned authority, as if he were a Doctor. "You looked like you might pass out."

"No," Astoria replied, her voice barely above a whisper. She cleared her throat impatiently. "No. I'm fine. I've been here for four months now. Or it will be, soon."

She turned away from him, suddenly struck by just how long it had been. It had been four months since she had been outside, felt the wind on her face. It had been four months since she had been able to read a book. Four months, she realized, since she had really been able to talk to another human being.

"What did you do?" She asked, turning on her heels and pacing the length of her cell.

"Sorry?"

"There's a reason you're here, I'm assuming? This isn't just some holiday."

"That's the thing," Draco said, with such gravity in his tone that she was compelled to stare him in the eye. His silver eyes were marked with confusion and sadness. "I don't know. I really don't know."

**A/N: Hello Readers! If you wouldn't mind, please take a few moments to review this story if you have enjoyed it at all. I'm trying to gauge who actually enjoys my stories out of the people who read them, so if you could just take a few moments to let me know what you think, please do so! Thank you!**


	3. Chapter 3: Snake Boy

**Day 2-Draco:**

On the second morning Draco had been locked in a cell, he was served breakfast. It came on a metal platter, and there was no silverware, so Draco had to eat with his hands. It was eggs on toast, typical breakfast food, but the eggs were runny and watery, and the toast was burnt and so crunchy that it got caught in Draco's throat. He ate ravenously despite all this, his stomach aching and growling loudly from the lack of food from the past two days. When he had finished all his food and licked the plate clean, he glanced across the hallway, to Astoria's cell.

That was her name, Astoria Greengrass. It had a familiar ring to it, there had been a girl in his house at school named Daphne, but he had not known her well. Astoria may have been a relative, a sibling perhaps, but Draco had not asked her. She was sleeping through breakfast, he noted with surprise. They had shoved a plate of food through the gap in her cell bars as well, and Draco noted with envy that the boy who delivered food and slipped her an extra piece of bread.

A few hours passed, and Draco wondered if it would be unreasonable to ask for the time. He wished he still had a watch on him, but he had lost that ages ago, at the battle of Hogwarts. He looked over his own wrist, where the watch had been, and traced his fingers over the angry red welts, which had not vanished in the past four months. He wondered if they ever would. The storm of fiendfyre he had been trapped in and burnt the metal in his watch so badly that it molded to Draco's skin, leaving behind a set of burns that he believed would scar the skin for life.

Draco glanced over at Astoria's cell, to see that she had awoken. Her first move of consciousness was to walk over to the breakfast tray, sniff at the food, and then snatch up the glass of water. She drank without reserve or pause, gulping down the glass in seconds. She then looked over the food, wrinkled up her nose, and pushed the tray out of the bars with her toe, refusing to even touch it. Draco's stomach growled so loudly that she looked up in alarm.

"Sorry," she said, a half-amused smirk overriding her expression. "I would have pushed it all the way over there, if I could."

"Do they give you lunch in this place?" Draco asked, glancing down the hallway as he inched closer towards the bars of his cell. If he got close enough, he could wriggle his face through the bars just enough that his vision wasn't blocked by the metal pillars, and it almost felt as if he weren't in a cell at all.

"Usually stew or some kind of gunk they call noodles," Astoria replied. She glanced towards the window in her cell, too high to look out of, and then nodded to herself. "But that might not be for some time."

"How do you know? How can you tell?"

Astoria stood in the center of her cell, back to Draco, and raised her arm. She moved it mechanically, like the arm of a clock, and then stopped as sudden rays of grey light shone over her skin.

"I've learned to tell time from the light outside," she told him. "What light there is, anyway." She walked over to one side of her cell, the side with the toilet and the mirror and sink. From under the sink, she grabbed a roll of material, and unrolled it in a clipped, business-like manner.

"What's that?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I've only been here forty-eight hours if you haven't noticed, didn't you have a lot of questions when you first came here?"

"No." Astoria blew on her fingertips, stained with some sort of black chalk, and began to let her fingers dance over the cinderblock walls—she was writing something. "Questions get you no where, really, haven't you noticed?"

"No," Draco replied.

She rolled her eyes, folded up the scrap of fabric, and stored it back under the sink. She turned on the tap and began to scrub at her hands.

"Asking questions may determine Point A and Point B, but only action gets you from Point A to Point B. You catch my drift, Snake Boy?"

"Snake Boy?" Draco asked, slightly affronted.

"Your name is Draco, which if I'm not mistaken, translates to some sort of reptilian creature, and as you were in Slytherin, well, it all falls into place doesn't it? Not to mention you have been particularly slick at getting away from the Ministry for some time now, hmm?"

"Well, you said you were in Slytherin," Draco replied, trying to keep up. Astoria never stopped moving, never stopped speaking. She paced her cell, stretched her arms and legs, and cocked her head from side to side as she spoke, her eyebrows dipping and rising with her tone. "I might just call you Snake Girl."

"No. No, I don't quite like that. It implies I'm some sort of sidekick, if you're Snake Boy and I'm Snake Girl; it sounds like I come in second to you in some sort of way. And you'll soon learn that I don't come in second. Ever."

"It could just sound like we're married," Draco pointed out.

"Sounds like you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there, Snake Boy." Astoria grinned in a superior manner and then spread her legs, stretching as she plunked her hands down on the floor. Her hair tumbled down, nearly brushing the floor, and she winked at Draco from between her own legs.

"You're something." He frowned. "How are you so-?"

"What? Cheeky?" Astoria jumped back up into place and cracked her own back, moving her arms from side to side. "I'm probably mad, to be honest. I've been here one hundred and twenty-five days with no one to talk to but the blushing boy who delivers the food."

"One hundred and twenty-five days?" Draco asked, his brain whirring. "But that's…"

"Yes, of course, the Battle of Hogwarts, everyone knows that," Astoria said, waving a hand. "Keep up, I didn't know Prefects could be so dense."

"Forgive me," Draco said, his temper rising but his voice icy. "Hiding out in a forest for one hundred or so days has slowed me down a bit."

"But of course." Astoria withdrew a bit, reprimanded. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget about the world outside. Like I've said, I'm mad."

"Mad, possibly," Draco conceded. "But I highly doubt criminal. What did you do to get in here, anyway?"

"Ah, yes. Wouldn't you know it; my family had ties to Voldemort. Seems that I do, too."

**Day 125-Astoria:**

She had caught a cold. Astoria knew the symptoms full well—she had a headache when she woke, and not from the fact she had no pillow on her cot. She had long ripped up the pillow in a fit of rage. But anyway, she had a cold, and it was apparent from her stuffed up nose. In the evening hours of her 125th day in prison, they brought her soup to eat, and she had never been so grateful.

"Thanks, Cole," she said, mocking a flirtatious tone as the pimpled boy's hands shook when he handed her soup. He blushed all the same at her words though he shouldn't have, the words of a prisoner had no place to do that. Cole wiped his brow, and gave her an extra pack of saltine crackers, and she winked and held a finger to her lips quietly. Cole nodded. From across the hall, Draco glowered and stared hungrily at the extra packet of crackers in her hand.

She had thought, once he arrived, that perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad to have a boy living across the hall. In a sad, pathetic way, it reminded her of her days at school. And it comforted her, a bit, to see that the boy was one she recognized, even if he didn't recognize her. But Draco had begun to disappoint her, a bit. He was so concerned with _why _he had ended up in this place, and it seemed that he expected answers from Astoria. Well, she had no answers to give, and even if she had, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have handed them out. Astoria was not a usually generous person.

But then again…he was the only person who had tried to hold an actual, real conversation with her in the past one hundred and twenty-five days, the least she could do was show a sliver of interest, or reciprocate the best she could.

"Here," she called, once Cole had gone through the exit at the end of the hall. She held up the extra packet of crackers in hand, and Draco perked his head up from the depths of his soup bowl, which he was drinking as easily as if it were a mug of tea. "If I throw these high enough, they'll plunk through the top bars of your cell and you can catch them."

"How do you know?" Draco asked, extending a hand upwards. Astoria threw the crackers. They sailed directly up through the top of his cell, bounced off the side of his bed, and he caught them with one hand.

"I used to practice throwing pebbles in their at night, when I was bored. Sorry if you have quite the collection over there…I was bored quite a lot."

Draco was quiet for a moment, and then placed his bowl aside. He ripped open the packet of crackers with cracked, calloused hands. Astoria imagined that if she had seen his hands up close, they may have been blistered and bloody around the nails. Draco munched quickly on the saltines, scattering crumbs everywhere. Astoria winced; the mice would come later this evening to feast.

"You said you were in here because you were connected to the Dark Lord," Draco said after a while, and Astoria nodded.

That's what they had told her when they came to arrest her. It had been odd, surreal. The school had just brought her home, and her Aunt Vera had been there too. They had called in a batch of healers to look over Astoria, and she heard Aunt Vera telling the healers that she had been in shock. Aunt Vera said it was because her family had died. And that's when they came to take her away, the aurors. They had read a script of paper with her charges, her reasons for arrest:

_Conspiracy to commit Treason_

_Conspiracy to commit Murder_

_Conspiracy to commit Genocide_

_Involvement with Illegal Magic_

And then, when they had taken her away to her cell, one of the aurors hissed in her ear: _Serves you right, you Dark Lord loving filth._

"Yeah, that's what they said. Don't know why, though. I'm sure they have no evidence." Astoria smiled bitterly. "Props if they can find anything connecting a sixteen year old student to Voldemort."

Draco flinched and paled at her words.

"Sorry, is it the name?" Astoria shook her head. "Apparently I just can't respect authority figures. That's what some of the guards have told me."

"No, it's just…A memory," Draco murmured, turning away from her. He ran a hand over his crop of white-blonde hair. "That's all."

"Alright, Snake Boy?"

Draco didn't answer. He quietly moved aside his soup bowl and shivered as he crawled into his cot, pulling the covers up to his chin. Astoria moved closer to the bars of her cell, peering at him, trying to gauge his expression.

"Oi!" She called. "Are you sick too?" Draco didn't respond. Astoria grimaced and turned away. So it was fine when he wanted to talk and ask questions, but when she did so, she didn't get a response. It wasn't as if she had better things to do, but had she not been in a jail cell, that's what she would have said to him in a haughty and conceited way that would have made Draco Malfoy thoroughly ashamed of himself.

Astoria crawled into her own bed. She began to close her eyes to drift off to sleep, when she heard Draco say something quiet into the darkness.

"What?" She called back.

"You're not mad, you know that?"

Astoria was quiet for a few moments. She tapped her fingers in rhythm against the metal framing of her cot. The sink began to drip. Moonlight swung through the window and caught the far wall in it's light. One Hundred and Twenty-Five tallies crowded the cinderblocks.

"You ask a lot of questions," Astoria replied. She might have heard him chuckle into the darkness, a very brief spurt of laughter that was quickly extinguished as he lapsed into silence, and then they both fell asleep.

**A/N: Please remember to give a quick review! If I don't get enough reviews, I won't write anymore!**


	4. Chapter 4: Wednesday

**Day 4-Draco:**

He was awoken by Astoria, excitedly moving about her cell. She was stretching and jumping, and attempting to do pull-ups on a bar installed above her bed. Draco rolled over and watched her for a moment—for someone who was rather short, she was muscular and strong all the same.

"What's going on?" He mumbled as she counted under her breath, but just loudly enough that he could hear her. He wondered if she did that on purpose—just to wake him up. He had the feeling that as cheeky and brisk as she was, Astoria was incredibly lonely. _Twenty-Two. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. _Her arms quivered on the last pull-up, and then she swung down to the floor with a graceful landing, balancing on the balls of her feet.

"It's a Wednesday," she said with a grin. She wiped the sweat from her brow, and then stared expectantly at him.

"And that's important because…?"

"Oh, I forgot. I'm really trying to slow down for you, I am."

"I'm sorry I didn't get the how-to-survival guide for Prison," Draco quipped.

"Ah, Snake Boy bites back," Astoria shot back. "Every other day we get to shower. And I got skipped on Monday because they brought you in. So, most disgustingly, I have not showered for about four days now."

A shower. Draco nearly salivated at the thought of such a thing. He hadn't showered in months, just dipped his body in rivers during the summer, and when it had grown too cold to do that anymore, he had warmed pans of water over bluebell flames and had painstakingly given himself a sponge bath—it had taken ages.

"I know," Astoria said aloud, recognizing the desire for luxury on his face. She grinned and grasped the bars. "They give you soap and everything, and it isn't bad at all. At least, mine isn't—it smells like gardenias."

"A shower though," Draco replied, just as eager as she was. "They're not like…mass showers, are they? People won't…" he paused, looked around, and whispered the end of his question with an embarrassed tone. "See me? I don't want people staring at me."

"Self-conscious?" Astoria questioned.

"The opposite," Draco said, absent-mindedly rubbing the inside of his left arm. The dark mark was still there, faint, but visible all the same. He threw an arm behind his back as Astoria eyed it curiously. He wondered if others saw it, if it would give him any power—or in prison, a reputation he didn't want. Who knew what would give others a mean to talk? What if the Dark Mark, in a dark wizard's prison, was a rallying symbol?

"Don't worry about it," Astoria replied. "We're the only two people in this whole place."

"What?" Draco asked, unsure if he had heard her correctly. "The only two?"

"That's right. I overheard the guards talking about it one of the first days I was here. Apparently, this was supposed to be an overflow prison for those under twenty, but it seems that you and I are the only ones who fit into that category, or the only ones that were caught." She shrugged and fanned her skin, which glistened with flecks of sweat. "But I don't mind it. This place, at least. We might be alone, but it's a converted old Palace. Like a muggle one. Apparently this belonged to some muggle Queen, Elizabeth or something like that. She was imprisoned here by her own sister, but for a prison, I'd say it's not bad at all. Our showers are huge."

"God," Draco breathed, watching her chatter away. He was taken aback by her cadence of her own situation—here she was praising the showers when she was locked up in a cell away from the outside world. "How are you okay with this?"

"I think I'm going to have to start limiting your questions." Astoria rolled her eyes. The door at the end of the hallway clicked open, and Draco could heard the heavy footsteps of a pair of guards approaching. She stared at him for a moment, and then bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes relenting. "I'm not okay with it," she whispered loudly as the volume of the footsteps increased. "But I have to make it seem like that."

**Day 126-Astoria: **

There was one female guard in the entire prison. Her name was Enid, and she was awful and disgusting, in Astoria's view. She was built like a man, with wide, burly shoulders and thick legs, one of which could probably outweigh Astoria's whole body. Enid had a mole in the center of her upper-lip, and there was a hair growing straight out from it, with a small curl at the end. Enid repulsed Astoria, and she was cold to boot, so Astoria decided to make her job as miserable as possible.

"Enid, won't you be joining me in the shower today?" Astoria began to ask as Enid and the male guard, Joseph, lead her and Draco down the hall and down a flight of stairs, towards the showers. "I know you'd like it."

Draco let out a soft scoff behind her back, and Astoria grinned. Enid's cheek twitched with anger and displeasure, and her grip on Astoria's upper arm tightened. Astoria breathed in deeply.

"Enid, you haven't been using my soap-on-a-rope, have you? You smell an awful lot like gardenias, and unless you've been rolling around in the ground outside, I'd think you're trying to smell like me. I won't have that, Enid, you know there can only be one of a kind."

Enid didn't reply, but Draco's scoffs of amusement increased behind her, and Astoria could feel his breath floating over the back of her neck. This was the closest proximity they had been in since he had been delivered into the prison, so close that if Astoria turned around, she could rub her cheek against his. Even kiss him, if she pleased.

This was how close they had been when they first met. _Astoria had been hurrying to Defense Against the Dark Arts when she was a first year. They had a new Professor that year, Hogwarts always did. Although this Professor seemed collected and kindly, Astoria had a feeling he harbored some sort of hostility against the Slytherins, as he seemed to favorite the Gryffindors. She vowed not to be late to this class, vowed not to give Professor Lupin more of a reason to favorite those shallow and arrogant Gryffindors._

_Astoria had been hurrying up the stairs towards the Great Hall, making a beeline out of the dungeon, when someone bumped into her. The great oaf, Crabbe, had spilled her books out of her hands, and they went flying everywhere, landing pages down on the dirty stairs. She had nearly screamed an explicative expressly forbidden from her vocabulary, courtesy of her parents, but a tall, pale, blonde boy had quickly scooped the books up and shoved them back into her arms without a second glance on her._

_Thank you, Astoria had said to him, but he was busy berating his friend and had not noticed her words._

_God, Crabbe, Draco had said. I didn't know being so large meant you were part troll. Your coordination is almost as bad as Potter when he's on a broom. _

"Get in," Enid suddenly barked, pushing Astoria forward. They had arrived at the showers. There was a large, round entrance room, and then beyond that, another smaller room with a sitting chair. There was no door between these rooms, merely a screen to distort the figures beyond. At the end of the second room was the entrance to the shower, closed off with privacy glass. There were a series of windows set high around the round room, casting brilliant light onto the Spanish-tiled floor. Astoria's feet squished delicately against the tiles, and she breathed in relief.

She stepped into the second room, with Draco behind her. Joseph set him down in the sitting chair with a warning look, and then glanced at Enid. She nodded, and he unlocked the shower door. Astoria stepped inside and shut the door behind her, then stripped off her clothes.

"You have to talk to me," she told Draco as she threw her clothes over the top of the shower door. "You see how Enid and Joseph are standing outside that room?"

"Yeah," she heard him say dubiously. "How come they're out there?"

"Prisoner privacy," Astoria said as she turned on the water. It streamed over her body and she squirmed in pleasure as the water pounded down on her aching back. "But we need to keep talking loudly enough so they know that we aren't trying to escape, kill ourselves, or trying to have sex."

Draco's response was a short stutter, and then he mumbled: "How would we kill ourselves? I don't even have a razor. They don't even give us silverware."

Astoria reached over towards the far wall, where two jars were suspended in mid-air, when she placed her hand under one, it spurted out a small stream of shampoo, which she lathered into her hair.

"Yeah, I think they believe we can die if we swallow enough shampoo." Astoria breathed in the perfume-y sent of the shampoo as tendrils of steam wrapped around her body. "I'm glad I got to shower today, I miss the water very much."

"I miss the lake at school," Draco admitted. "I liked seeing it from the common room windows."

"That's right," Astoria said as she reached for a spurt of conditioner. "I once saw the Giant Squid from my dormitory window when I was a first year. Scared the life out of me. I thought I would never sleep again." She paused as she rubbed conditioner into her hair.

"Astoria?" Draco asked.

"Oh, yes, sorry!" She shouted over the water. "But I miss the water at home, too."

"Where did you grow up?" He asked.

"Hastings," she called back. "My mum and dad had a big estate on a cliff. My sister and I…when we were little we drove my mum mad by cliff diving. She hated it, thought we were going to drown. There were merepeople there too. My sister hated them, found them creepy…but I didn't mind them. The water spoke to me all the same."

The water shut off quickly. It had an automatic timer, to make sure that the prisoners didn't get too used to comfort. Astoria sighed and raised a hand to her hair. Traces of conditioner hadn't washed out of her hair.

"Oi, is there a towel out there?"

"Erm, hold on." Draco moved around, she could hear his feet squelching on the floor. Second passed, which turned into a minute. Goosebumps began to line her skin. Impatient, Astoria ripped open the door to look for herself. Draco turned to face her, a towel grasped in his hand, and his eyes grew wide when he saw that she made no attempt to cover herself. Astoria placed her hands on her hips.

"Well?" She asked. "Are you just going to stare or hand me my damn towel, Snake Boy?"

Draco handed her the towel wordlessly, and then looked up at the ceiling, though Astoria knew that isn't where he wanted to look at all. She wrapped the towel firmly around herself, and then moved aside, allowing him entry into the shower. Her clothes, she realized, he had folded neatly over the arm of the chair. She turned to thank him, but before she could, Draco jumped into the shower and closed the door tightly behind him, shutting her out.


	5. Chapter 5: Blood and Justice

**Day 8-Draco:**

He had dreamt of Astoria for the past four evenings in a row. He had seen her naked form when she emerged from the shower; short, toned, tan, and covered in beads of water as the steam wrapped around her like a cloud. Draco couldn't help it that his thoughts kept drifting back to the sight of her naked body, after all, she was the only girl his age he had seen in almost four months.

Every time he dreamt of her, the dream was the same. He was walking through an unfamiliar forest, until he reached a stream. At the edge of the stream, bathing herself in the middle of day, was Astoria. She appeared almost as a quintessential mermaid, draped over a rock and playing with her hair before fully submerging herself in the water. Draco crept closer and she finally saw him, noticing him with a smile and a glint in her eye.

_Come in, _she called out to him, treading in the crystal clear water. Draco gulped in his dream, he could see every inch of her body and he felt himself rise. Astoria noticed, she smiled wickedly and raised an eyebrow. _Come on, Snake Boy. _She beckoned to him with long fingers, and Draco stepped towards her, stripping off his clothes along the way. _You know, _she would say as he stepped in the water, beginning to return her smirk as she swam towards him, bare chest rising above the line of the water, _I always called you Snake Boy for more than one reason. _

And then he would kiss her, their bodies writhing and heaving with desire he had never quite felt before, and she would hook her legs around his waist, rubbing her hands down the length of him, and Draco would moan and grab her hair…and then she would kiss him again, this time, biting down hard on his lower lip. Every time she did so, she would draw blood. And every time, Astoria would lick the droplet of blood away and swallow it, grinning as she did so.

_Yum, _she would say.

And then Draco would jolt himself awake. He would glance through the bars, into Astoria's cell, and watch her sleep for a moment, making sure she didn't wake. God forbid he was talking in his sleep.

The fourth night, she was already awake when Draco shot up in bed, sweat lining his spine. He ran his hands down his face, attempting to clear his mind when she suddenly spoke.

"Nightmare?" He glanced over towards her cell and saw that she wasn't looking towards him, but up towards the sliver of moon just visible through her window.

"Yeah," Draco muttered, crossing his legs so she couldn't see that he wasn't scared at all, quite the opposite. Normally, with any other girl, Draco would have been much more arrogant and forward, but there was nothing quite like a jail cell to break your game. "Why are you awake?"

"Couldn't sleep," Astoria replied. She turned towards him just as the moonlight slid over her face, and she smiled bitterly. "Had a nightmare, of sorts."

"I think we all have nightmares, now and again," Draco said quietly.

"We?"

"Anyone who was at Hogwarts the night of," Draco said. He felt for a moment as if he should add on, but Astoria knew full well what he was talking about, from the look on her face.

"I saw you that night," Astoria said after a few moments, drawing up her knees to her chest and glancing over at him. Suddenly, she looked quite small and vulnerable. She looked as if she was helpless, lost in a crowd, with nowhere to go. Her chin tightened as if she were trying to hold back tears. "Running through the crowd in the Great Hall."

"I was trying to find my parents," Draco said, somewhat defensively.

"I don't blame you."

"Where were you, that night?" Draco asked her, curiously. "God, you must be what, sixteen? Seventeen? I thought everyone underage was supposed to be evacuated that night. Especially the Slytherin students. Didn't want them hanging around, did they?" Draco nearly snorted at the thought of the fight, nearly void of Slytherins, save on Voldemort's side.

"Fifteen at the time, sixteen now," Astoria said, closing her eyes and settling back against the wall. "And yeah, we were supposed to be evacuated, but rules and promises were made to be broken. I went back in to find my parents, just like you."

"And did you?" Draco asked. But he knew from the look on her face now that she hadn't found them. He felt his own heart sink and he suddenly yearned to see his parents now, despite everything, just to make sure they were okay.

"I did," Astoria said, surprising him. "But only in time to watch them die."

**Day 131-Astoria:**

Her birthday had come and gone, and Astoria realized, somewhat belatedly, that there had been no one around to recognize the fact she turned sixteen. No one but the mice that scampered through the halls, and the marks on the wall that helped Astoria to track what day it was. Her birthday had been July 23, but now, over a month had gone by.

She realized that one of the nights she couldn't sleep. It didn't happen often, but occasionally, Astoria would find that no sleep would find her, and she was destined to stay awake, leaning back against the wall and praying that her eyes would finally drift shut. But one of the nights she couldn't sleep, Draco woke too. He told her he was having nightmares, and that almost everyone suffered from nightmares.

Astoria found herself growing unreasonably emotional over the fact that somewhere, out there, people were sharing her nightmares. She doubted, however, that anyone's nightmares ended the same way hers did—in a jail cell. When she turned sixteen, it had been one of those nights she had a nightmare, and couldn't fall back asleep.

"I'm sorry," Draco said suddenly, breaking a momentary silence. She had just told him the reason for her nightmares—the images of her parent's death. He seemed at a loss for words, his pale, pointed face suddenly contorted into a mask of empathy. The expression didn't fit somehow, it seemed unused, but it was genuine all the same, and for that, Astoria was a bit grateful.

"So am I." She felt her mouth tug downwards. "They weren't even fighting. My mother was just there to find my sister and I. And my father, he was there for the same reason." Astoria felt her voice raise an octave, and she looked away from Draco. All of a sudden, she felt anger burst within her, like a candle that would not blow out. Draco wouldn't understand, of course. His parents were not in that fight for the same reasons her parents had been—they had been part of the guilty party. Her tone came out accusatory. "They were just bystanders. Not like _your _family." In her mind's eye, Astoria saw her mother's body arc as it fell to the ground, her head hitting the stone floor with a crack that seemed louder than any scream that echoed around her…

"My family?" Draco asked, taken aback, but sudden anger crossing his features in an unquestionably frightening way. "What do you know about my family? You don't know if they fought or how they did, or what sacrifice they made in order to keep _everyone _alive."

"What do I know about your family?" Astoria shrieked back, shooting off her bed in an instant. "I know they're still out there. I know that you were with them, and I know that you never watched them die in front of your eyes all before you turned sixteen. I know that you don't have any siblings that you have to worry about, since there would be no sibling to leave you word or otherwise, that they're alive or dead." Astoria saw hot flashes of rage hover in the corner of her eyes, and in her anger, she grabbed the edges of the sink so hard that she could feel her knuckles screaming in protest. She reached out and punched the mirror in front of her, finally losing her cool. She did not cry when it didn't break, nor did she cry when she heard the sickening crunch of her knuckles colliding with the surface.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Draco shouted from across the hall, panicked. "I don't know what you want me to say!"

"There's nothing that anyone can ever say that will ever _fix _this," Astoria wailed, cradling her hand. She winced, but still, no tears fell. And that's when she felt her body tense up, as if on alert. Her knees locked, her shoulders flew back, and she raised her head. If Astoria had looked at herself in the mirror, at that moment, she would have been somewhat astonished by her own posture and appearance—she looked as if she were heading off to war.

"Nothing can fix this," Astoria breathed, walking towards the bars to her cell. Draco would his hands around the bars to his own cell and stared at her. Astoria's heart beat faster as she locked eyes with his. The anger in his gray pupils had disappeared, and nothing but tenacity and resolve was left. "Maybe I can't fix what happened, but I can sure as hell make sure that people will pay for what they've done."

"Revenge," Draco said, his eyes lighting up at the idea. She could see his brain beginning to tick, whirring into place. He wanted to get out; he wanted to right his own wrongs.

"No," Astoria said. She curled her right hand into a tight fist, and the skin on her knuckles finally broke open, leaving blood to drip into a thick puddle onto the floor. "Justice."


	6. Chapter 6: Friend or Foe?

**Day 9-Draco:**

_Justice. _The word felt wrong and unnatural on his tongue—and left a bitter aftertaste that he couldn't swallow. Justice did not exist in this world. Justice would be in a world where his parents had never been persecuted, where Voldemort had never risen to power, and where he, Draco, had not been faced with decisions and consequences that no man (no _boy_) should have to make.

His hands shook at the thought of _revenge. _Exacting everything that had gone wrong—perhaps making up for the lack of justice in his own course of life. Draco, the morning of his ninth day of imprisonment, focused on revenge as he woke up. He woke up earlier than Astoria, as they had both fallen asleep in a rather riled mood just hours before. He woke with a sudden determination in his heart that he hadn't felt in quite a while. Excited and anxious, Draco began to plan. He found a marbled rock under his cot and raised it to the wall, ready to carve the names of those who had betrayed him, those who would be the subjects of his wrath—

And then he lowered his hand. He let the rock drop to the floor. This was the problem, then. He didn't have any names. He didn't have anyone to exact revenge on, except perhaps the Ministry, but more specifically, he didn't know _who _in the Ministry had betrayed him. How could he work on a plan to avenge his own dignity when he didn't even know why he had been imprisoned in the first place?

Draco sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. He leaned his chin on the palm of his hand, musing. Perhaps he could trace it back to the end of the Wizarding War.

_The fights had gone, Voldemort was dead, and things had begun to return back to normal. But after the fall of Voldemort, when the new Minister was instated, the trials began to take place. Trials of war criminals, crime lords, Death Eaters. Draco and his father were both publicized, they had been summoned to testify about their connections to Voldemort just days after the war—but they had not been arrested. Harry Potter had provided them a pardon, for the time being, thanks to Narcissa's actions the night of the Hogwarts battle._

_But then, the day Draco and his father were supposed to show up for the hearings, a paper showed up on their doorstep. This was unusual, as the property was highly protected, and the Daily Prophet only arrived when Lucius's handsome owl, Alionus, soared through the window during breakfast. The paper that arrived on their doorstep featured the headline: _**The Malfoy Testimonies: Friends or Foe? **_Someone, whoever had brought the paper by, had crossed out the faces of Draco and his Father with red ink, so that the moving little people in the picture clutched their faces with agony, the scribbles hiding their features entirely. On the top of the paper, someone had written: _**Run.**

"_Father," Draco had asked, gripping the top corner of the paper. "What the hell is this rubbish?" _

"_I think," Lucius said, his brow furrowed. "Someone is trying to warn us of something."_

"_But what?" Draco scoffed. _

"_I don't know," Lucius said, looking off into the distance, his eyes suddenly alert. "Draco, get inside." Draco had filed inside, perturbed and annoyed by his father's attitude. It was only a stupid prank. _

_But then, just a half hour later, Draco saw that it was not. His mother had screamed. She was down the hall, in the parlor, and when she screamed, Draco ran to her. Narcissa was standing, frozen, at the window, staring down at the grounds. A troop of Ministry officials were marching down the driveway, wands at the ready. A pair of dementors glided in their wake, arms outstretched, as if waiting to embrace Draco. He shivered, and stood with his mother, transfixed, watching them approach the house._

"_Narcissa, Draco," Lucius came running into the room, holding a leather bag in his hand. He grabbed his wife's elbow, and she put a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and terrified._

"_What's going on?" Draco asked, panic rising in his throat. He glanced back down outside. _

"_It's the dementors," Lucius said grimly. "When they are about to feed on a soul, you can see their breath. See, Draco?" Draco glanced out the window. Indeed, the dementors had soft clouds of black smoke emerging from under their hoods. "They're not here to get testimony. They're here to kill." One of the Ministry officials suddenly looked up directly at the window where Draco and his parent were huddled. He cast a sudden curse, blasting the glass apart. Narcissa let out a shrill scream, and Lucius had grabbed them both and apparated on the spot._

"Draco?" Astoria was calling his name. "Draco?"

"Yeah," Draco replied, jerking out of his thoughts. He clutched the back of his neck with a hand and then rolled it back and forth, cracking the joints. He glanced towards her, to see that she was laying in her cot still, tossing back and forth underneath the covers. "Astoria?"

"Draco," she moaned. He could see her body flailing, as if she were having seizure. Her head jerked wildly from side to side, her waterfall of shining hair flying through the air. "Help. Help me!"

"Astoria, wake up," Draco urged. He gripped the bars and kicked his foot at the metal, trying to wake her. "You're dreaming."

"Draco!" She screamed, sitting upright. She screamed and screamed, and her eyes flew open, the skin taut as her face morphed into a mask of horror. She screamed in short gasps, and then collapsed, breathing heavily and whimpering.

"Astoria?" Draco asked after a moment of silence, tentatively. "Are you alright?" He could see her hands squabbling at her own face, trying to wipe the sweat away, as she blinked rapidly.

"I know why," she murmured, just loudly enough that he could hear. "I know why you're here."

**Day 133-Astoria:**

_At Hogwarts, Astoria had fallen in love three times. Once, with the Astronomy Tower, which always provided a glistening view of the grounds and a promising palate of the stars above. Second, with her own brilliance, which she had mastered at a young age, using it as a weapon against all who she deemed to be below her. And third, at a young age, Astoria had fallen madly, deeply, in love with Draco Malfoy. But he didn't know that, of course. _

_Astoria had fallen in love with Draco Malfoy when she was just eleven years old. At the time, he was a third year, two years older and very aware of it. He lorded his authority over the younger students with a surprising amount of force and authority for someone so young. And Astoria noticed him, but he never noticed her, or rather, never gave any sign he noticed her. And for Astoria's part, she didn't know much about him other than his frighteningly austere aura. This changed with during the Slytherin Quidditch Tryouts._

_Astoria decided to sneak onto the team. She had a plan. She might have been just eleven, but Harry Potter had proved his skill when he was her age and had made the Gryffindor team. She planned on doing the same. After all, she had played her father many a time at their own estate, and he had __almost__ played for Ireland. She arrived at the Tryouts clutching her new Nimbus, ready to ride, glancing up nervously at the fifth and sixth years she was up against. _

_The captain, Marcus Flint, stood by, the only one exempt during tryouts; he yelled at them to start speeding drills, flying around the pitch as fast as they could. Second, he commanded them to do passing drills, tossing the quaffle as they looped back and forth around each other. Astoria was relieved as she threw a great toss to Adrian Pucey. No one had noticed that she did not belong. And then, for the final drill, Flint commanded they try a scrimmage. Astoria was put on Draco's team, along with Pucey and Flint himself. On the other side were Draco's friends, Crabbe and Goyle, who appeared to be trying out for beaters._

_The match started out all right. Astoria and Pucey threw some good passes, and once, Astoria managed to dart up between Crabbe and Goyle and throw the quaffle right through the middle hoop. _

"_Nice job," Draco muttered as he flew by, smirking when he suddenly spotted the snitch._

"_Thank you," Astoria called back, but it was too late. He had already gone too far. She grinned stupidly at the recognition of her own talent, when suddenly; she saw something hurtling towards her out of the corner of her eye. A bludger, obviously rogue, was coming right towards her._

"_Watch out!" A sixth year girl called to her. Astoria ducked, and wobbled on her broom. Her hands, slick with nervous sweat, couldn't grasp the thin handle. Astoria slipped off the side of her broom, just managing to hold on with a few of her fingers, which, of course, began to sweat more from her own nerves. The players shouted to stop the time, and began to fly towards her, hoping to help. Astoria shut her eyes and tried to grasp the broom handle, but found that her hands were too slick. The broom began to move a bit, flying towards the end of the pitch in an exponentially quickening pace. Astoria couldn't help it—she screeched._

"_Hey!" Draco had flown up besides her, and was holding out a hand. "Come on, take my hand."_

"_I can't," Astoria whimpered, looking down to the ground. If she fell, surely, she would break her neck._

"_You're going to hurt yourself if you don't take my hand," Draco had told her. It was as if he read her mind. "It's not as if it makes a difference to me, I was trying to do you a favor." _

_Astoria winced, glared, and then swung her free hand up, holding tightly onto Draco's. He managed, somehow, to hook an arm around her waist and pull her up in front of him, guiding his arms around her as he touched his broom down to the ground lightly. Astoria's eyes were closed the whole time, both out of fear and mortification. But when they landed, Draco lightly pushed her off the end of the broom, and then grasped her shoulder._

"_Hey kid," he said, and Astoria's eyes flew open._

"_I'm not a kid," she said instinctively._

"_Right," Draco said. "Look, you're a first year. I can tell."_

_Astoria's face must have betrayed her fear, and Draco's face slid into a mask of confused frustration. He knit his brow and then sighed and glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the members had resumed playing without him._

"_Look, I'm supposed to tell Snape if any first years try out, he would punish you. But you look scared shitless, so just leave before Flint notices you, okay?"_

"_But I wanted to try out," Astoria whispered, her plan shattered before her own eyes._

"_Next year, kid. Now go!" Draco soared back into the sky, releasing her shoulder with a slight squeeze. Astoria watched him go. As she did, Draco darted a bludger and then sunk his elbow into a fourth years back, sending the boy's broom rocketing down to the ground, leaving the shaft of the broom to shatter upon impact. Astoria recoiled._

_Why had he been kind to her? It was not once, but twice now. And yet, he had failed to look her in the eye, or even to ask her name. It was then that Astoria realized, for reasons she could not quite fathom, that she loved the side of Draco Malfoy that had been revealed to her. She had a feeling it was not a side many people saw of him. She appreciated this—it was like a secret the two of them shared. Someday, Astoria promised herself as she lay in bed at night, her nimbus safely locked in the trunk at the foot of her mattress, Draco Malfoy would see __every __side of her, and he would love her as she loved him._

**A/N: Please remember to review, guys! I hate to be a nag, but constructive comments really help me improve. Thanks!**


	7. Chapter 7: Loyalty

**Day 9-Draco:**

"You know?" Draco asked. "You know why they brought me here?"

Astoria's eyes rolled into the back of her head and then she collapsed back onto her mattress, her lips forming whispers. She sighed heavily and turned over onto her side, her eyelids fluttering rapidly, and she reached up and twined her fingers through a chunk of her hair.

"Astoria?" Draco murmured, and then sunk to his knees. He bowed his head. "You have to tell me. You have to tell me what you just saw." He glanced up and stared at Astoria, who tossed and turned back on the mattress, her arms flinging carelessly as she wrestled with a fully blown bout of sleep. How she had fallen asleep again, so quickly, Draco was unsure. But he wasn't about to let her slumber last much longer. His heart quickened pace. "Astoria!"

She woke at his shout, jumping out of her cot with cat-like agility, her eyes wide and her hands clenched into fists, as if someone had called out her name as an attack. After a moment of silence, she realized what she had done, and slowly lowered her fists and relaxed her stance.

"Sorry," she mumbled, her cheeks a bit rosy. "Instincts never die."

Draco didn't think at the moment to ask what possible instincts would provoke such a reaction, but instead leaned his forehead against the cell bars, congealed sweat rubbing off on the metal.

"You woke up just a little while ago," Draco said. "Do you remember that? You spoke to me, and then just…passed out."

"What?" Astoria said. She smirked. "I think you're losing it, this is most definitely the way I woke up this morning. Believe me, it's embarrassing enough to admit I woke up with fists at the ready, so, yeah, this is the first time I've gotten up this morning. Now turn around, I need to pee."

"What did you dream about?" Draco asked, pressing the issue, his hands quaking as he laced them together and slid them behind his head.

"That's kind of personal," Astoria said, her cheeks growing even redder, as if blush had stained her skin.

"Look, I don't want the details unless they have something to do with me. You were screaming my name like it was life or death, and I just…you sat up. And you spoke to me. You told me you know why I'm imprisoned here. And I don't. I still don't know." Draco felt a frustrated lump rise in his throat and he turned away from Astoria, wishing for some goddamn privacy, just once.

"I'm sorry," Astoria said. "Look, I…I don't remember what I dreamt about. I don't remember dreaming at all. I don't even know if I've seen you since before May, even. There's no reason I would know why you're here."

"You're right," Draco said. He sat the floor, legs sprawled.

"Some privacy, please?" Astoria said, gesturing to the toilet. "I have to pee."

Draco turned around, propping up his back against the cell bars. "It's a weird feeling, knowing you have no privacy."

"I haven't had privacy in a long time," Astoria replied. "They're always watching us. I can feel it."

"But I mean, no privacy between you and I," Draco said, closing his eyes, as if that could drown out the fact that Astoria was, most likely, using the toilet behind his back. "I mean, at Hogwarts, it was a huge school. Massive. And yet, I always had a shred of privacy, even living in a dormitory with however many people…it was such a private place that you could even go unnoticed."

"Well now I can't concentrate," Astoria announced, annoyed. "I can't even get the privacy to pee in this place."

"Sorry," Draco said. And then he couldn't help it. He chuckled. "I don't think a girl has said that to me before."

"Don't get used to it," Astoria replied, but when Draco turned his head to peer over his shoulder, she was smiling to herself, unaware that he could see her. "I'm sure many girls would be happy to be this close to you, in this proximity all the time."

"Maybe," Draco said, thought when he thought about some of the girls he had gone to school with, he knew she was right. "But a lack of privacy, actually being okay with it, is like a two way street. I wouldn't want them to invade my privacy, and I was uncomfortable when they did."

Astoria kicked a pebble across the way and it went flying over Draco's shoulder. He turned to stare at her. She looked quite striking in the hazy morning light.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" She asked. "My being here? I can always ignore you."

"No, please don't," Draco said quickly. Too quickly. She raised an eyebrow. "Right now, your company is the only thing that makes me feel comfortable."

**Day 135: Astoria-**

They came to her cell early in the morning, before the sun even had a chance to rise. There were four of them, three men and Enid. They yanked open the cell doors with a clattering metal echo that made Astoria leap from her bed, kicking her legs as the figures approached her, arms outstretched.

"What are you doing?" Astoria screeched as the hands grabbed her shoulders, two of the burlier men holding her still. Draco had woken from the commotion across the way, and blurrily stood up to watch what was going on. Astoria let out an angry shriek as the hands held her more tightly, binding her shoulders from moving even an inch.

"Hey," Draco shouted, just as angry as Astoria was. "What are you doing to her?"

"None of your business," Enid snapped, the mole above her lip quivering distastefully. She pointed her wand at Draco's cell, and Draco's lips continued to move, but no sound came out.

"It's my business!" Astoria said, still attempting to wriggle out of the grip of the guards who held her. "What is this? You can't treat me like this!"

Enid ignored her. "You're getting just what you wanted. Democracy treats even the scum well. You have a court date today."

Astoria stopped moving and stared at her. "A court date? How was I not informed of this?"

"It's just to gather testimony, a standard procedure."

"I'm not going until I know what this is about," Astoria protested. Enid looked to the guards who held Astoria. She nodded at one, and Astoria felt a large, meaty hand settle over her eyes. Another hand pinched the base of her neck, not softly, and Astoria felt her vision grown fuzzy, and her body suddenly felt warm and weightless. And then she drifted off.

When she came to, Astoria was standing in a long, dark hallway, with guards still flanking her sides. They had bound her hands together in iron cuffs, as though she could escape with men the size of sumo wrestlers watching her every move.

"Where am I?" She demanded of one of them. He did not reply, but kept his gaze ahead. He had a long scar down the side of his rock-like jaw, and Astoria silently applauded whoever gave it to him. From down the hallway, she heard a series of shouts, and then a door being opened and closed. Cold, drifting shadows that faintly resembled ghosts were visible at that end of the hall, lurking in the dark. Dementors. She shuddered anxiously, and glanced down at her own feet, covered in the plain canvas sneakers she was permitted to wear, but only without laces.

A few moments passed, and then another door in the hallway opened. A man with a thin, long nose and curly red hair emerged and beckoned to the guards, who seized Astoria so swiftly and tightly that she felt her feet leave the floor. They guided her right inside the room, past the red-haired man, as Astoria continued to hiss curses and kick her legs in protest. Of course, her efforts were futile.

They had brought her to a courtroom. She didn't recognize the room, of course, as she had never been to court before. It was an intimidating room, with ceilings that stretched so tall that Astoria couldn't even see where they ended. There was a large podium that stretched over her head, and at the top sat a woman that looked vaguely familiar. The guards roughly shoved Astoria into a golden chair in the center of the room, a chair that was overlooked by rows of seats inhabited by a few Ministry employees, wearing noteworthy plum colored robes.

"Astoria Greengrass." The woman at the podium announced, peering down at her with a pained expression, as if Astoria's presence was a waste of her time. She wore a bushel of hair up in a knot on top of her head. On the chest of her robes was the telltale silver W. _Wizengamot_. "We have called you here from the Crouch Imprisonment Facility in order to extract testimony that may prove valuable to the Wizarding Community concerning the series of events on May 2, 1998, as well as events leading up to the date in question."

"I want a lawyer," Astoria barked, interrupting the woman. The woman fixed her with a witheringly conceited gaze.

"A third party is not required for the testimony we intend to elicit today. Miss Greengrass, we have called you in today in order to ask you a series of questions regarding Draco Lucius Malfoy, a former student of Hogwarts and a current prisoner at the Crouch Imprisonment Facility."

"What does that mean?" Astoria shouted, shaking her hands angrily in the cuffs, which cut deeply into her skin. She winced as a drop of blood squeezed out, dropping onto her left shoe and staining the canvas.

"Miss Greengrass, if you continue to hold this court in contempt, we will have no choice but to prolong your sentence." Astoria grimaced. "Now." The witch leaned over the podium, her bushy hair beginning to unwind from the knot on her head. Astoria recoiled.

She had seen Hermione Granger on more than one occasion. It was hard not to miss her. Bushy hair, fast-paced walk, and a high-pitched voice that always projected an aura of ostentatious knowledge. But here, now, surrounded by colleagues and put in a place of power, round-shouldered Hermione Granger had never seemed so terrifying.

"You were present at the Battle of Hogwarts on May 2, 1998, were you not?"

"Yes," Astoria whispered, her voice cracking in fear. She shut her eyes as Hermione gazed down at her. Hermione Granger, best friend of the boy who lived…

"You stayed during this battle, though you were a member of the Slytherin House, were you not?"

"I stayed, yes." Hermione had always seemed to have her nose in a book, never the type to seem so aggressive…

"During the course of the battle, did you see Draco Lucius Malfoy at any time?"

"No," Astoria responded immediately.

Hermione glared at her. "If you do not tell the truth, we will be forced to give you veritruserum. Think before you speak."

Astoria felt her stomach heave, and her body was jumpy with nerves. She closed her eyes. She had seen Draco that night, she had seen almost every one that evening. But what had he been doing? In her mind's eye, she watched as Draco ran through the crowd, pulling his wand from the pocket of his robes. He held it aloft, took aim, and fired off a curse that buried itself in the chest of… Astoria's mind, at that moment, went curiously blank. A screen of white draped itself over her mind's eye, blocking her vision, her memory. When she spoke, her voice was stronger, calmer, than it had been before.

"I saw Draco, yes."

"Please entail exactly what you saw him doing."

"He was running." Astoria thought of the way he had raised his wand, ready to attack, and paused. This, she thought, was not something to share with the crowd that surrounded her. "He ran towards the grounds."

Hermione stared at her with an expression of disbelief. "Is that all you saw?"

Astoria stared back, determined. "I saw more, but not of Draco Malfoy." She turned her head to look down the Wizengamot members. "I do not know why you are holding him against his will, I haven't even a clue why you were looking for him in the first place, but I can assure you that I have known Draco Malfoy since I was young. And yes, he may be arrogant and sarcastic, but that is hardly the makings of a criminal. In fact, as I remember, those were traits that Harry Potter himself often exhibited during his stay at Hogwarts." Astoria glared. "Draco Malfoy did nothing to harm anyone the evening of May 2nd, if he's guilty of anything, it was trying to protect those he was loyal to, jut as everyone else was trying to do."

"I think," Hermione said carefully, after Astoria gulped in a deep breath, carefully eyeing a set of dementors that had positioned themselves behind the podium. "We will be the judges of that. You're dismissed until the next court date, Miss Greenwood." She banged a gavel on the podium, and Astoria felt the guards hands wrap around her upper arms, dragging her backwards from the room. The doors closed behind Astoria with a hollow bang, drowning out her shouts of protest from the members of Wizengamot.

"Do you think it triggered the memory?" One of the members asked, gazing upon Hermione.

"It certainly looked like it," Hermione replied, tugging at the neck of her robes. "Poor little Miss Greenwood, so unused to not getting her way. I can sense the rebellion in her heart. She will use it to our advantage."

"Let's certainly hope so," piped up another member of Wizengamot.

Hermione smiled, a smile that might have been beautiful, had it not been twisted with a sense of sick power. And then, suddenly, the skin began to break out into boils, bubbling madly into a different shape. The other members of Wizengamot stood in respectful silence, with others seemingly experiencing the same symptoms, their jaws slack. When the process had ended, Daphne Greengrass stood where Hermione had, smiling in the same, maniacal way.

"I'm getting ever so sick of these games," Daphne sighed, tucking her glossy hair behind her ears. "I can't wait to break that bitch."


	8. Chapter 8: Patience

**Day 14: Draco-**

He awaited his own court date. Astoria had come back after being dragged in front of Wizemgot. Draco insisted that if she had a day in court, he would too.. It seemed as though the days were drawing out, stretching into a full two weeks that he had been here. He wondered often about his parents, trying to convince himself that there was a chance that they were alive. Hopefully, they had escaped being captured by the Ministry, but of course, there was always the chance that they too were awaiting a court date.

Late at night, the precise time he didn't know, but it was dark enough that he could no longer see his shadow, Draco spoke out to Astoria as he lay in his cell, hands propped up behind his head. He had grown a shadow of a beard over his chin, and though the blonde hair was sparse, it was still long enough that he had to itch at it occasionally, with a lazy flick of his fingers.

"So Granger presided over it all?" Draco asked into the darkness, thoughtfully blinking. He could just see Astoria's figure moving around her cell, stretching her legs.

"For the hundredth time, yes."

"Sorry, I just can't picture it," Draco mused. Hermione Granger had been a classmate of his back at Hogwarts. He had always known her to be obnoxious, infuriatingly so, but not fearsome in the slightest. Of course, there had been that time she punched him in the nose, but he had gotten back at her in their fourth year by hexing her teeth. Most of all, though, his memories of Granger were usually dominated by her overly eager classroom demeanor, where she refused to shut up. Maybe dominating over a court did suit her.

"You would have if you had seen it," Astoria argued. "Scared the shit out of me, she did."

"Then I wouldn't have to picture it," Draco pointed out. He scratched furiously at the scruff that lined his jaw. "Did you…did you see anyone else there?"

He heard Astoria shake her head. She had a funny way of doing that, she always shook her head in a most determined manner, her hair swinging back and forth so furiously that it smacked against her skin like a wet towel. "No. On one hand, I wish I had. But on the other, I don't." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Who knows why I didn't see anyone else. You would have thought there would be people there…to testify."

"Yeah." Draco paused for a long while before standing up to stretch his arms above his head. He arched his back like a sleepy cat. Surprisingly enough, he found that he had grown more flexible over the past few days, but he supposed that he had too much time on his hands, and it left him with no other options. "I wonder when I'll get a court date."

"Mhmm," Astoria hummed non-committedly, her voice going up a few octaves. She sounded scared, and Draco figured that the memory of being grilled in front of Granger had probably traumatized her. He knew better than to probe her. "Maybe…maybe you don't need a court date."

"Why would that be?" Draco asked.

"I just…do you ever think it might just be easier to escape? Break out?"

Draco turned so abruptly to try to squint at her that he cracked his neck. "Why are you saying that?" He sauntered up towards the bars, pressing his chest against them in a better attempt to get a glance at her. Astoria, who always seemed so sure of herself and straightforward, had been shaken and quiet ever since she had returned five days ago. She had hardly spoken at all, and when she did, it was only about the things she had heard in court that mystified or scared her. The way Astoria had begun to speak now worried him, desperation was tinging the edges of her tone, as if she were clinging onto something that was slipping away from her.

"I don't know." She slid towards the bars and Draco could see how gaunt she looked in the moonlight. She had dark circles under her eyes, and the cocky aura that had once lit her features had since disappeared. "I've just been here for so long that I got used to it. But now I'm thinking…maybe I should try to go on the run. Get out of the country. And maybe you should, too."

"And how do you propose doing that?" Draco questioned. He wondered why she had never brought this up before.

"I really don't know." That was all she seemed to say, lately. _How did your court appearance go? I don't know. Are you feeling okay? I don't know. What did they ask you? I don't know. _Perhaps, before this, he may have expected her to scream her reply, overreact in the most outrageous way. It would be preferable to this Astoria, quiet and withdrawn. "I just feel that way, is all."

"I don't think that's the best strategy. I've done a lot of things I regret, Astoria. And the world knows it. Maybe its time I let the system take care of the one thing I didn't do wrong, the accusation I don't even know. Maybe then the world can see that I'm not who they think I am."

Astoria's fingers fluttered unexpectedly, and she sighed aloud. It was as if she wished to raise her hand, run her fingertips over his features, but she simply couldn't reach. He wished he were close enough to feel her touch—it had been so long since someone had reached out to him.

"I know who you are," she said quietly. "Or, in a way, at least. You were famous in Slytherin, you know. I knew you like everyone else did, but maybe even a little more." She lowered her lashes. "And knowing what I do, I'm being serious when I tell you this: go on the run. Go on the run and don't look back."

**Day 141: Astoria-**

She lied to him, because try as she might to deny it, she was still in love with Draco Malfoy. He was simultaneously both the boy who had protected her, and the boy who needed her protection. He had been cocky, and now he was broken. And, as Astoria had learned, there was something about Draco Malfoy that made him a wanted commodity. A hunted commodity, people were looking for information that could destroy him. Astoria knew that he was in danger now, from the very power that was supposed to protect the people.

There was a very simple lesson that Astoria had learned long ago, back in school, and continued to practice long after. Do not trust anyone. But she trusted Draco Malfoy, for more than one reason, and she guessed that he probably felt somewhat similar. And for someone who knew that trust was a rare blossoming of emotion, she decided to protect that precious flower with all her might.

_How was your court appearance?_

_I don't know, _she said, to keep him quiet. She did not want to worry him.

_Are you okay? _

_I don't know, _she said, when she really wanted to say: _no, I'm worried sick about what might happen to you._

_What did they ask you?_

_I don't know, _she said, to keep him in the dark. The less he knew, the better off he would be. If he were in the dark about crimes the Ministry thought he committed, he could hardly implement himself, could he?

She suggested one night that he escape. He had approached the bars of his cell so quickly that she could almost hear his bones crackle as they collided against the iron. When he asked her how, why, all she could say was:

_I don't know. I just feel that way, is all. _She felt that way because she wanted him to get away from her. She knew, deeply seated in the darkest caverns of her mind, were things about Draco Malfoy that, if under the influence of veritruserum, could put him in jail. She had yet to figure out what these memories were, but it seemed pro-active to get him out of the way before she figured out anything that could hurt him.

"But where would you go?" Draco asked from across the hall. He tilted his chin upwards. He still bore the slightest remnants of being arrogant, but it was a faded look now, replaced by a hardened sense of empathy that shone though only at the right moments.

Astoria shrugged. "I can wait it out."

She had waited for things before. Secretly, though she had never told a soul, she had waited for years for Draco Malfoy to notice her. She had hoped that one day, he would see her as a _woman, _someone with a body and mind as mature as his own. Someone he would find sexy, not a person that gaped on him, not a little girl he could call 'kid.' Funny enough, her moment had come just two weeks ago, and even then, it seemed that she would have to wait a little longer, just to protect him.

Draco slid down to the floor. "I want to get out of here, I do. Probably just as badly as you do. But I think it's important to be patient. At least for now."

"What does being patient ever get you?" Astoria snapped suddenly. "Be patient all you want, but usually it leads to talk and no action."

"How would you know?" Draco replied, a smirk spreading over his face.

Astoria felt her stomach drop, and she tried to smirk right back. "Being patient leads to long bouts of waits that do nothing but eat at you until you feel like you're tipping on the edge of the world, about to fall off."

"Hmm." Draco cocked his head. "You seem to know a lot about that." Astoria was quiet. "You don't have to tell me why."

"I'm sure you've heard already. At school, around school." She shrugged. "Everyone knows." He may have known already, but Astoria wished he didn't. At the same time, she knew what she was about to get herself into. She wished he didn't know, but she was offering up a piece of herself to him. Maybe enough to change his mind, make him eager to leave. Eager to get away from patience.

"I hate to say I don't know anything about you, but I'm afraid the gossip surrounding you never quite reached my ears at school."

Astoria, despite what she was about to reveal, felt the tips of her ears turn pink.

"When I was in my fourth year, I met Roger Davies. That Ravenclaw, you know? A few years older. Quidditch Captain. Anyway, he became interested in me. And I was so flattered. Because when I was fourteen, I flew under the radar a lot. I wasn't extraordinary at anything, really, but Roger told me different. He asked me out and I said yes, because I wanted his attention, and I loved it desperately. There had been another boy, you see, but he paid me no mind. And Roger did, so I accepted that attention." Astoria swallowed, her voice crackling as she retold the story she had long tried to forget. "When he first took me out, Roger took me to the shrieking shack, to try to catch a look at the ghosts in the place. And before I knew it, we were inside there, and he was kissing me."

"Astoria-" Draco began, his brow furrowing deeply. She held up a hand to stop him.

"I liked it. I wanted him to. And I still craved his attention. And you know what happened then? I gave him myself in return. A little bit of attention for a part of me I hadn't even begun to explore yet. I let him…" she shook. "Put it in me. I was so young, and I hadn't even gone so far as to even take of my shirt in front of another boy yet." Draco watched her with silent eyes, empathy shining through. "When it was over, he told me to wipe the blood of my thighs, and he took me back to my room. I waited for him to send me an owl, ask me to eat with him, ask me out again, even just say hello. And you know what? He never did, Draco. He started dating other people, and that's when I knew. Patience does no good for the people who worship it. Patience locks you in a trap that you can't break from, and you just wait and wait until it's broken you."

"I'm not broken," Draco protested. "And neither are you."

"Not yet," Astoria corrected him with a tilt of her head and a wry smile. She didn't say what else was on her mind—that very soon, if he did not abandon his ideality of patience and justice, both of them would be broken.


End file.
